- Title
- Learning to be men : Masculinities, pedagogy, and science fiction
- Creator
- Wight, Linda
- Date
- 2016
- Type
- Text; Book chapter
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/102344
- Identifier
- vital:10796
- Identifier
- http://library.federation.edu.au/record=b2624884
- Identifier
- http://doi.org/10.4324/9781315689739
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781317425021
- Abstract
- Like many cultural studies practitioners, my research, learning, and teaching are concerned with critiquing and contesting taken-for-granted assumptions that posit that human identities and social structures are fixed, natural, and inevitable. These are assumptions that can contribute to social disadvantage, oppression, and inequity. My research has focused in particular on problematizing hegemonic ideals of masculinity and in exploring the potential for science fiction to critique and offer alternatives to these dominant models. This chapter reflects on the embodied experience of doing this form of cultural studies in the classroom, of exploring these ideas in the context of a pedagogical exchange with undergraduate university students enrolled in a fantasy and science fiction course. Both the experience of masculinity— for men and women—and the activities of learning and teaching are deeply embodied. The purposes of this chapter are therefore twofold. First, I argue that science fiction is a useful tool for encouraging students to develop their awareness of how popular culture functions as a form of public pedagogy that frames how each of us experience masculinity. While some science fiction takes hegemonic ideals of gender for granted and encourages us to do the same, other texts problematize these assumptions by showing us the potential for bodies to be lived and experienced differently. Second, by reflecting on my own embodied experience of teaching science fiction in a university classroom, this chapter aims to encourage teachers to think about how we actually do cultural studies with our students and to move beyond conceiving of the classroom as a purely intellectual space to also embrace the bodily dimension of our practice.
- Publisher
- Taylor and Francis Inc.
- Relation
- The Pedagogies of Cultural Studies (Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies series) Chapter 3 p. 39-50
- Rights
- Copyright © Taylor & Francis
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- Masculinity; Pedagogy; Science fiction; Cultural studies
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